Rebate King: Every Beauty I Spoil Makes Me a Billionaire-Chapter 8: Twice Rejected, Once Broken!

At the entrance of Peak University, Sarah was wearing a grey jacket paired with white sneakers, her hair draped loosely over her shoulders. There was an effortless charm about her that made it impossible for the passing boys not to steal a second glance.

In terms of looks, she and Maya were equally matched.

An Audi A8 rolled to a stop not far away, and Zane stepped out, adjusting his collar before making his way toward her with the practiced ease of someone who had never once been told no.

"Sarah, what a coincidence. Want to grab a meal together?"

He had originally set his sights on Maya, but she had slipped right through his fingers and straight onto the back of some nobody’s bicycle.

The memory alone made his jaw tighten. Losing Maya to Stan had done a number on his pride, and the wound was still fresh. Sarah was his chance to cauterize it. In terms of beauty, she was every bit Maya’s equal, and that was more than enough.

But Sarah’s reply came without a moment’s hesitation.

"No, I already have plans with someone."

The words hit him like a blade. Zane blinked. He wasn’t lacking in looks. He wasn’t lacking in money. He had only just transferred to this university, and somehow he was already racking up rejections from its most beautiful women. Two in a row. The humiliation was staggering.

The calm, unremarkable face of a certain bicycle-riding nobody surfaced unbidden in his mind.

Zane gritted his teeth. ’No. I can’t accept this.’

He forced a smile and closed the distance between them, lowering his voice to something he imagined was charming. "Don’t be like that. I heard your family’s been having some trouble. Money’s tight, right? I have more than enough to spare."

As he said it, something possessed him to reach out and rest his arm around her waist, as though the gesture might tip the scales in his favor.

However, it did not.

Sarah’s expression cooled instantly. She shook his arm off with a sharp, unhurried motion and picked up her pace, putting distance between them without another word. The slight furrow of her brow said everything her silence didn’t.

"No need, the money issue has already been resolved," she said coldly after giving him some space...

Stan had already lent her ten million dollars. Whatever Zane was offering, she neither needed it nor wanted it, and his character alone was enough to turn her stomach.

Behind her, Zane stood frozen mid-step, watching her walk away. The last card he had planned to play had been dismissed before he even got to lay it on the table. He had nothing left to offer, no angle left to work, and he knew it.

Sarah wasn’t just out of reach. She was already gone.

As he stood there in silence, nursing the dull ache in his chest, the faint ring of a bicycle bell cut through the air behind him. Zane stepped aside on instinct and then went very still.

The rider was Stan.

He could do nothing but watch as Stan coasted to a smooth stop right beside Sarah, one foot dropping to the ground with casual ease.

"I’m late, sorry." Stan’s voice was unhurried, almost gentle.

Sarah shook her head, and something in her expression softened in a way it never had for Zane. "You’re not late. I just got here too early."

She had arrived a full hour ahead of time, though she would never admit that out loud.

Zane stared at the bicycle. Something about this felt deeply, horrifyingly familiar.

Then it clicked.

His hands curled slowly into fists at his sides, knuckles whitening as the pieces fell into place. Stan. A bicycle. A beautiful girl waiting for him with a softness in her eyes that money couldn’t buy. It was the same scene, beat for beat, only yesterday the girl had been Maya, and today it was Sarah.

’That’s impossible.’

The thought ricocheted around his skull, refusing to settle. Girls like Maya and Sarah were supposed to gravitate toward men like him, men with Audis, men with money, men with options. That was how the world worked. That was how it had always worked. So why were they both gravitating toward a guy whose greatest asset appeared to be a secondhand bicycle?

"How is it you again?" The words scraped out of him low and tight, not quite meant to be heard.

But Stan heard them.

He glanced over his shoulder, and his eyes were flat and cold and utterly unbothered.

"Yeah," he said simply. "Me again."

Stan’s voice was cold, flat, unfeeling, and it cut deeper than any insult ever could. Zane’s fingers curled into tight fists, his chest tightening as a familiar humiliation clawed its way up his throat. Never in his life had he been made to feel this small, this powerless.

Three words. That was all it took.

Meanwhile, Stan turned back to Sarah without another glance.

To Stan, Zane wasn’t special. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t done much personally, he carried the same arrogance, the same entitled air as Leo. That alone was enough.

And Stan hated that type.

Ironically, he could feel himself changing too. The system, with its cashback features, was slowly reshaping him, nudging him toward the very same excess and indulgence he despised.

But there was a difference. He was aware of it. And unlike them, he had no intention of being blind.

If anything, that awareness only sharpened his resolve.

People like Leo... people like Zane...

Stan wouldn’t hesitate to crush their pride completely.

They strutted through life thinking everything belonged to them, wealth, status... even women.

Maybe it was time they learned otherwise. Maybe it was time they experienced what it felt like to have something they believed was theirs taken away right in front of them, and be utterly powerless to stop it.

Meanwhile, Sarah settled onto the back of the bicycle, her arms looping around Stan’s waist with a natural ease, as though she had done it a hundred times before. As they pulled away, she glanced back over her shoulder.

"We’re heading off, Senior."

Then they were gone, rolling down the path together, unhurried and unbothered, growing smaller in the distance.

Zane stood rooted to the spot.

He was aware, distantly, of a cold scoff from Stan drifting back toward him on the breeze.

He could only watch as Stan rode Sarah away...

And painfully so, the position of Stan and Sarah was achingly intimate. Sarah clung to Stan from behind, arms wrapped warmly around his waist, her body molded flush against his back. Even from Zane’s trailing vantage point, he could picture it perfectly. Sarah’s large, soft, squishy breasts pressed gently into Stan’s spine with every sway of the bike.

From his angle, he couldn’t see much, but his imagination filled in the rest, Sarah pressed warmly against Stan’s back, close and comfortable in a way she had never been with him, not even for a second.

His teeth ground together.

’What do they all see in him?’

In terms of looks, Zane genuinely did not believe he fell short.

If anything, he had more going for him, the face, the car, the money. By every metric that had ever mattered in his life, he should have been winning.

What he couldn’t see, what he had no way of knowing, was that Stan had already quietly spent millions on both of them, that behind that unassuming, bicycle-riding exterior was someone playing an entirely different game at an entirely different scale.

All Zane had was the scoreboard in front of him.

And it was not going in his favor.

’It should’ve been me.’